them up here. You can’t get on with your work when people are everlastingly coming in and out. I just chuck it now, and sit tight in my own room, and let them get on with it.
I like the old boy, though—and, by jove, he does know how to cook! Yes, cook! He has a passion for cookery as a fine art. I must get him to show me how to make omelettes—I don’t believe you know anything about it, do you? Also rump-steak, on which his views are very sound. He also has a fungus-complex—thinks the poor peasant ought to go forth and cull his grub from the hedgerow, and all that. He knows a tremendous lot about edible toadstools, and delivers lectures on them to Lathom, for whom he has taken a great fancy. As a matter of fact, Lathom is one of those offensively healthy people who shovel down anything that is set before them, but Harrison doesn’t see that, and enthuses mildly on in a sort of resistless river of speech that forces itself past all interruptions. Mrs. H. yawns, Miss Milsom yawns, Lathom yawns and I do my best not to yawn, because I’m the only person here who has any real sympathy with the subject, so it’s up to me. I’m not sure, though, that his monologues aren’t better than her intense duets. However, Harrison has now gone away into the country on his lonesome, so perhaps we shall be free of visitors for a bit.
I have been round to see Merritt & Hopkins, and this time saw the great Man of Merritt himself. He was very genial, and encouraged me to dig my old novel out of its sepulchre, in a last forlorn effort. You know—the one I wrote just before I met you, and which no one will have anything to do with. He has promised to read it himself, which was so decent of him that I hadn’t the heart to suggest that a younger man might look upon it with more sympathy!
I have just been reading the Messenger ’s interview with you, my child. How entertaining! What grand publicity! And how damnable impertinent. I suppose I shall be expected to put up with everybody